Night and the Enemy

Based on an Ellison story from 1957 and its sequels telling the story of the Earth-Kyba war with a frame story set millions of years after the war ended. There’s a coward who, left behind by his fellow humans to slow the advance of the Kyba, discovers courage in an ironic and terrible way. There’s a human fighter confronted by a robot gone insane, and so on. This is closer to an illustrated story than to a conventional graphic novel—there’s a lot of text and no lettering, just dialogue inserted into the frame with type. The images differ as between the stories, but are mostly bold rather than detailed. Despite the 2015 production, the stories remain of their time (e.g., the telepathic, humanoid race encountered in one story show more wears loincloths/necklaces with “teeth” on them, straight out of standard racial stereotypes, and its leader tells the protagonists how another group “burned our jungle and took our women and killed our warriors,” although I guess that’s supposed to be ok because one of the humans to whom they’re saying this is black). show less

Published by Comico in 1987, Night and the Enemy is a graphic anthology consisting of five military SF tales written by Harlan Ellison and illustrated by Ken Steacy. Each story takes place during the two hundred-year-long interstellar war between Earth and golden-skinned aliens known as the Kyben.

“Run for the Stars” – Petty criminal and drug addict Benno Tallant is abducted by Earth resistance forces and implanted with a bomb to destroy the Kyben, but Tallant finds a way to gain the upper hand against both the Kyben forces and ultimately, Earth.

“Life Hutch” – After crash landing on a small planet during a space battle, a pilot named Terrance locates a life hutch—one of many small survival facilities constructed on planets show more across the galaxy in the event of an emergency. However, the robot programmed to maintain the life hutch malfunctions and attacks Terrance, leaving him severely wounded. Terrance soon realizes that he must remain immobile lest he trigger the robot again… but for how long?

“The Untouchable Adolescents” – Captain Luther Shreve offers assistance to the juvenile inhabitants of the planet Diamore, which will soon suffer a devastating natural catastrophe unless machines can be deployed to direct the shockwave to the planet’s oceans. However, the telepathic inhabitants do not trust the humans after their world was already plundered by the Kyben months before. They warn the humans to leave, yet Shreve insists on helping them—resulting in the deaths of six crewmembers. Finally, Shreve relents, but what price will the Diamore pay for their decision?

“Trojan Hearse” – The Kyba construct a metal ring called the Orifice through which vessels can travel at the speed of light to another ring elsewhere across the galaxy. In this case, to a ring hidden on Earth. Shortly after a human spy escapes Kyba with schematics to the Orifice, the Kyben decide to invade, confident that Earth could not have developed a defense in such a short time…

“Sleeping Dogs” – On Epsilon Indy IV, ambassador Lynn Ferraro attempts to stop warmongering Commander Drabix from destroying a series of what he believes are Kyben strongholds scattered across the planet. However, it is soon discovered that their weapons are incapable of penetrating these featureless black cubes. Finally, Drabix orders his ship in orbit to open fire on one of them— which he soon regrets.

All told, Night and the Enemy is a quick and engrossing read by one of the masters of the short story and beautifully illustrated by Steacy. show less

I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was very disappointed with this one. Harlan Ellison is one of my favorite authors, so I was excited to see something new. This wasn't what I was expecting, that's for sure.

The story was hard to follow, and the book felt more like an illustrated novel rather than a graphic novel. I know that sounds confusing, but this wasn't what I would classify as a "comic book" in the strictest sense.

The artwork suffered, too, and felt amateurish to me.

Not recommended.